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[Music] so [Music] all right good morning everybody we'll get started here we only have about 30 minutes so um thank you for joining i am katie shorey startup maine's president and today is our second session of the entrepreneurs and ecosystem builders series these virtual events feature thinkers and doers from across the state who are working on awesome things awesome products and for those that are also helping to further develop our startup ecosystem today's event would not be possible without our sponsors bangor savings bank and maine technology institute as well as our business news sponsor main biz and a little bit about mti maine technology institute it was founded and funded in 1999 by the maine state legislature and they offer grants and loans equity investments and services to support maine's innovation economy they support new ideas and products and methods with the potential to grow and diversify maine's economy and increase the number of quality jobs through the state by directly supporting innovators and they also support the innovation economy through event sponsorships that promote innovation like this series so we thank them so much they've been a great partner over the years and to find out more about them and if you're eligible for funding visit mainetechnology.org and i'm also going to show you a brief 30 second video from our other sponsor bangor savings so one moment let me share this screen and play the video all across new england business owners are finding new ways to succeed families are working hard to provide for their loved ones and their future it's the spirit of new englanders that inspires all of us to do more it's in our employees our customers and our communities every day we do more because at bangor savings bank we truly believe you matter more great so now i am excited to introduce you to today's guest tori penrod cambra co-founder and chief marketing officer of highbyte and a quick note uh tori and i officially met last year last october when she and her other co-founders came out to san francisco with startup maine to attend an exhibit at techcrunch disrupt and ever since i've been trying to get to know her better learn from her and really just follow along on her startup journey so i'm i'm excited to jump in uh welcome tori thank you thank you so much for having me welcome so tell me tell me about yourself tell me about high bite let's jump right in okay that sounds good um so i'm the co-founder and chief marketing officer at highbyte which is a um a portland maine based software company um that was founded in 2018 and just a little bit of personal background on me i moved to maine 10 years ago now and after a couple years of being here we had moved here so that my wife could attend grad school and then like so many others just fell in love with the state of maine and decided to stay so in 2012 i started looking for an opportunity here in the state and my career to date had been heavily in the life sciences and pharmaceutical medical device um so there was probably more logical choices for me to take but instead i found this small industrial automation software company called kepware in portland and um i just knew there was something really special about it and saw its huge potential and so i joined that team in 2012 and then went through the process of helping the company grow scale and then go through the due diligence and eventual acquisition of the company by ptc in 2016 and then stayed on for a couple more years after that um until 2018 where my role within ptc really grew so prior to becoming a founder of hybrid i was the vice president of marketing at ptc um of all of their internet of things and augmented reality product portfolio and of course at kepware is also where i met john harrington and tony payne who are my fellow co-founders at highbyte excellent so let's talk about um how the idea came about for high byte uh how did you see a need for what you now offer and let's tell let's tell folks what what high bite is and what you do and who you serve yeah so high byte is um is a software development company we focus on the industrial space so typically our customers are in the discreet or batch manufacturing industries and what we're helping those customers do is to model and add context to the data that's coming off of the plant floor and so five years ago our software really wouldn't have been needed if there was an engineer on the plant floor he or she was intimately familiar with the data that was being produced by machines and they were using that data for process control but the internet of things has really changed that and now instead of one person um you know looking at that that machine data right there on premises it might be going to dozens of different i.t applications um it might be going to a business analyst or a data scientist halfway across the world who needs to analyze that information and so the need for context in sort of raw data and the need to model and standardize and correlate information has just become so critical in the last five years and so we we provide a tool set for manufacturers to go in and and to be able to have the data infrastructure they need to scale their projects from from pilot into full-scale production so um what's funny though about highlight so that's kind of who we are but then the funny part about how we got started is that i think most companies start with a great idea but like we just started with a great team so we knew the three of us um you know we had very distinct swim lanes we loved working together and we knew there were still plenty of problems to solve with data in the manufacturing space so we actually spent the first six months after founding the company just doing research talking to customers talking to system integrators going to industry events just learning and absorbing and understanding what the problems were in the space and from there we formed the company and what i think is interesting is um you know that original problem we uncovered we just haven't wavered from at all and so while you know covid19 has sort of been a challenge but it's also really driven the need for more digitalization and manufacturing and we're frankly benefiting from that um even throughout the challenges of this year our mission really hasn't wavered at all and what we uncovered in that early market research is still what we continue to drive and develop toward and how many how big is your team now i mean how's the growth been there and with customers too is that how's that going yeah no it's good we just launched our first product to market this year so um always fun when you launch a global product during a pandemic um takes some bravery there i suppose um but we're a team of seven now and we had previously um you know we run the company as a pretty lean startup to date but now we're just starting to to really scale up the team and um expect a lot more growth next year as well both in terms of revenue and um growing the size of our organization i like to hear that good so let's talk about a day in the life of an entrepreneur because i feel like it's different for everyone and i'm sure you wear many many hats so just help paint a picture of of your daily entrepreneurship life yeah it's kind of wild sometimes so um you know when i was working in corporate i think at one point on my team there were 34 marketers and so we were all focused on demand generation for a handful of products and so we're very highly specialized in startup world you trade that depth of specialization for this very broad sort of set of knowledge and so i had to expand my knowledge base a lot from just marketing to operations because now we're running an entire operations and marketing organization with two people and so it just requires you i think a lot to be able to switch back and forth between very left brain and right brain activities so in one day i might be writing a press release and then i might have to transition and look at cash flow statements and then i might transition and work on a new hr policy and then i might transition and talk to legal counsel about our investment strategy so you're constantly oscillating between really different tasks and different sides of your brain and it was mentally fatiguing to me at first to be honest um i think my strategy now and i offer this is unsolicited advice to anyone who's watching is um to like give yourself a mix of stretch and comfort activities every day so for me my comfort is writing i love to write um so if i block off some time to do something that i feel truly competent about during the day kind of helps build my confidence to go out and do other stretch things or research other accounting implications or other things that for me are stretch activities so just like finding the right balance every day between doing things that build my confidence and doing things that um extend my knowledge so it sounds like that is that whole the bad life is different than what kepware may have been in ptc with more corporate so yeah so what did you learn at kepware and and then through the ptc acquisition that that prepared you for starting your own business like how did you go to startup yeah that's a really really good question um i'm glad you asked that so i think um in some ways having worked at corporate makes startup easier because if you know what the end destination looks like it's kind of easier to get there um so at ptc at cap where you know we have this very like highly sophisticated organization obviously and as a startup we're much scrappier but i still know how important some of the foundational elements are towards like accounting and legal so because i know how important they are for the acquisition um and so acquiring companies or investors are looking at things like how you're incorporated um your um you know whether you're an s corp or a c corp that's going to have implications down the road um you know how what are your accounting practices on cash versus accrual it's sort of like those simple kind of things where if you know the sophistication that's required to have a really successful exit which i've gone through that process before then it helps you build a good foundation from the start and i will just take a second to plug and say i'm very grateful for the time that we spent up front selecting our our professional services like our banking partners our accounting partners our legal partners i think you know to date they've been very critical to our success and um they're all main based companies and i'm really grateful for that good plug um yeah and just one more thing too i think before before i move on from this but um i think in our in our heads like there's a certain stereotype of what an entrepreneur is right what they look like how they act and i don't think a lot of people look at corporate pedigree and say oh yes um transitioning from corporate into startup world makes a lot of sense and um on paper like i'm not a silicon valley poster child right like i'm almost 40 i have two small kids at home i'm a woman um i and as a personality trait i i'm not very i don't like risk like i'm very careful so on paper i don't look like a good entrepreneur necessarily but i think i challenge myself to think what is an entrepreneur and for me what drove me from corporate into the position that i am in now is one um the really like the need to build something from scratch and prove to myself that i could you know take something from nothing and grow it into a really successful wonderful company here in maine that had a really healthy culture and a great quality of life for our employees i i like i just needed to grow that from scratch and then i think the second was um having john and tony who are incredible co-founders and gave me the confidence to do something like start um a company which is inherently risky i think my trust in them i can't like understate enough and that really helped sort of uh de-risk the situation for me as well so the need to build something from scratch paired with the deep trust i have of my co-founding team um you know let me say to myself i'm not your standard or your typical entrepreneur but i still deserve this opportunity to give to myself and there's still space for me here too and i think anyone who's watching this that maybe is in corporate now and has turned around an idea in their head of could i do this the answer is yes you're absolutely you're enough and you have all the skills you need to do this if it's something that's really important to you i love that and we had we had talked about this before about that that main culture too and like just the grittiness and being open to trying things like if we can brand maine as a place where all kinds of entrepreneurs are welcome that could be a game changer for us i think i agree i agree but speaking of maine so you have utilized resources and tapped into the entrepreneurial support organizations in the state so what worked for you who did you partner with tell us a little bit about that yeah well first i'll say there's a lot that's working it's working really well i mean of course there's challenges and everything but i just wanna well we should level set there there's a lot that's really working and working well in maine um we've had a variety of partners like institutional partners so earlier you mentioned maine technology institute they were critical to us from grants and now a loan that we are working with with them on that's been critical mti has been excellent to work with main venture fund they're one of our early investor partners and continue to invest in the success of our company they've been critical at a government level fame amazing organization incredibly responsive um very well organized to the main seed capital tax credit program awesome and a huge incentivizer and they even just under governor mills administration re-looked at that program this year and expanded it from 5 million to 15 million dollars so huge opportunities for investors now and into the coming year um even the main economic recovery grant that just opened i mean that was an incredible program also done through fame um organizationally in maine what's working startup maine um so you know obviously the annual conference was a challenge this year to hold but we're still here right now katie you and i sitting here and we're doing these virtual events and you're still keeping everyone together so i love that um and then i just think at the individual level um maine to me is a network of people that are so generous with their time as opposed to stories that i've heard from entrepreneurs in other states it's so easy here to ask someone out for coffee people are looking for opportunities to help they're looking for opportunities to mentor and we kind of have this attitude i feel like and mean of like pay it forward so everyone's very generous with their time because i think we all believe that like what we reap is what will sow and it's just like a very it's a certain kind of main generosity that i think is really special here i agree i always say i mean having been in dc in san francisco um maine isn't transactional it's relationship oriented and i i just i think that's really important to to focus on so yeah i hope i hope we preserve that as as we continue to grow and as a startup networking experience i agree so investing let's talk about money for a bit um have you how have you approached investing in state out of state i mean i know you mentioned mti i mean venture fund but what's that uh out-of-state approach look like yeah so for us what was smart was using in combination so we kind of have the best of both worlds so in state we have organizations like mti and mdf they know inherently um sort of the challenges and opportunities of growing a company here in the state of maine and so in that way like they offer something unique to um other organizational or institutional venture outside of the state but for us because we're such a niche product in some ways used in manufacturing technology it was important to us to also find an investor in our particular vertical market that's very focused on manufacturing technology the internet of things and had more o a global reach so you know one of our primary other investors is is actually a global vc um not even based here in the states so it for us it was it was sort of that combination between um you know local versus out but i will say the one thing that all of our investors have in common is that john and tony and i were really clear about what values we were looking for in investors and whether they're in state or out of state we've selected investors that are aligned to our values and frankly we've walked away from some that aren't we should have a whole other conversation on that another time so that would be definitely a good conversation so only because we have 10 minutes left um let's talk about some uh just some problems that you're facing and and then we'll we'll end on some some big ideas so let's so what's up what are some problems that that you're facing right now yeah maybe a couple so the first is is finding senior technical talent and finding diverse talent i'm sure maine is tired of talking about these topics but they still discontinue to be true we have a great network here of colleges and universities which is awesome but i think we're still starting to um the more senior talent is like taking time to sort of percolate through the state um and and diverse recruitment is still it can be a really big challenge here and and i say that as someone who is a woman who is coming from the lgbtq community and i still struggle to find more people like myself to bring into an organization so um it's it's certainly not for lack of trying and i feel like that's an area where we're all still sort of learning from each other about how to best tackle these problems and and i think the second area so talent acquisition is one the second one is really like logistics and by that i mean sort of um you know there's not a lot of like true incubators in terms of physical space here in maine and so real estate is still really tricky i know that seems very tactical but um when you're in startup you have no idea what your company is gonna look like in five years and so a five year lease just becomes this sort of laughable thing where i mean it's just not plausible um so i think um i guess i would challenge anyone who's who's watching this um that is in sort of real estate or entrepreneurship to be thinking about how can we help companies start here and sort of graduate up in their space in a way that de-risked this for them um so just the just the physical logistics of operating a company here is um can be really challenging still okay yeah and we've talked about health care and staying completely and um i am i'm doing some research on healthcare and startups so more more more to come on that thanks katie i like when i send you off on these missions okay i want to i want to see the needle move i want to i want to help so i know so um and we did have one uh one interesting question pop up um i think it's kind of on the what you just talked about just some of the problems if there's one thing maine could change or do more of to support your growth what would that be yeah i think it's i think it's the talent piece um and we're doing a lot of things right now it just needs to continue to head in that direction so i love seeing this sort of like i feel like a little bit we're having an entrepreneurial movement in maine right now it's like early but it's happening and um the talent piece is just so critical so i see great sort of stem things happening at um you know at the middle school and high school level um incredible programs happening from lewiston um even all around the state so these sort of grassroots movements are happening at that early stage and then i see more entrepreneurial programs now um at colleges throughout the state and obviously rue institute um i think that's going to be a tremendous benefit to the state so you have all these like little things happening but they're just happening in pockets everywhere so to me um solutions around attracting talent to the state of maine and then keeping our college kids here after graduation um and continuing to help them grow their careers here in maine viably i think is so important so for me and maybe it's because i know that we have a lot of company growth ahead of us in terms of recruiting and i'm just i'm constantly thinking about how do we get how do we get the best talent in here and um so for me yeah definitely definitely the talent acquisition and talent retention piece which wearing my other hat with live work main always on the top of my mind but there's so much more i'm doing there and um yes agree actually after the last session somebody sent me an idea around like startup maine junior entrepreneurs so just wheels are spinning there uh last few minutes here so um what are you uh because you said we're having a moment is there anything which i agree and i and i've heard others say that too so what else are you what are you most excited about that you're just with everything kind of going on amidst covet 19. yeah heck of a year really um no i think i think the areas i'm excited about like i just mentioned that sort of multi-level everywhere from like middle school all the way up through graduate programs and beyond i see all of that starting to come together that's really exciting i think the potential for entrepreneurship to change means economy i mean you don't have to like take my word for that there's so much data on how small businesses and entrepreneurs positively impact the um the economies around them and i would love to see main main benefit from that and then the third i guess is like you know to the piece of the movement you mentioned that we were with you last year at techcrunch and we made these incredible sort of bonds with the other companies that went in a way that we almost couldn't have done here in maine we like went all the way to california to bond with each other which was kind of funny but those relationships have really preserved um i mean just as an example um i mean the amazing team at defendify comes up with this great idea and reaches out to us a couple weeks ago and says well what about the intersection of manufacturing technology and cyber security let's do a podcast and we're like yes great so um i think there's so much opportunity for entrepreneurs in the state to continue to work together creatively and that makes me special too because entrepreneurs in other states i feel like often look at each other as um competition for resources and here we're just not taking that mentality and we're like sticking together and find finding ways to build each other up and i'm i'm really excited about that good do you have any suggestions um for early stage founders who are looking to grow or relocate domain i mean i know you started but when we're talking about talent a piece of that may be companies moving here and then they're also going to need they're going to need to get plugged in so any any early if early stage founders who are looking to grow and make grow or relocate to maine any advice there yeah um you know it's it's a harder year to network obviously because of coven so much of what we're doing is virtual and that can be tricky when not in person i said it earlier but i will stress the importance of great professional services partners so you know really doing your research and talking to other founders about who will be a great legal accounting banking partner for you those resources are really critical to you as you grow um i think those are super important and um you know the other sort of i guess in close up to like big idea i'll put out is i it can't all just be on entrepreneurs to do all of this we need investors to help too and um it's much easier if i'm approaching an investor out outside of the state of maine because an investor inside of the state of maine made that connection rather than me trying to contact them cold and i think the more the on the investor community in maine reaches out and networks and becomes more comfortable too with different investing formats that are used on the west coast i mean not to get so tactical but you know safes versus convertible notes what qualifies milestones for precede versus seed it's like creating more of a shared network and then also shared expectations and vocabulary for investors within the state and out of the state i think will help mean founding companies so much when um our investors in the state like keep driving forward and being ambassadors for the state of maine too because you know founders can't do it alone we need the help absolutely yes um we did have a few other questions come in but i think i'll say if it's okay with you um if someone we wanted to get in touch with you how how could they reach out to you yeah absolutely please connect with me on linkedin um and send me a note after this and and let me know that uh you were on a session i i usually accept connections only for people that i've met personally but this is kind of a different year so um yeah send me a note and i'd be really happy to connect and then i'll give you my email address and we can keep this conversation going excellent so any uh any final final words as we send folks off on on their day today um i think just thank you thank you for i know all of us are a little bit zoomed out sometimes so thank you for to everyone for coming and katie thank you so much for hosting this series i think it's so important and i can't wait to see um the future series sessions to come thank you very much and just so everyone knows we are recording these we will send out this recording and the last one with nick rimsa and then our next session is on november 24th with christine logan um the director of tech place so thank you all for for joining in this morning and like tori said please reach out if you have questions this speaker series has been getting a lot of uh great feedback so if you have any suggestions on as we continue to have speakers just please reach out and let me know so thanks tori and i'll uh i'll talk to you soon thank you you